In this episode, Belinda Pollard, Donita Bundy and Alison Joy interview Kirsten Holmberg, ghostwriter, editor and author of devotionals for Our Daily Bread Ministries. Kirsten, an introvert, has grown to love speaking at retreats and conferences, and coaches other public speakers, including pastors and TedX speakers. She shares practical tips and inspiration for the value of speaking aloud in a variety of contexts, even for the most introverted of writers.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the podcast! And go to gracewriters.com for show notes, transcript, useful links and factsheets, and to connect with our online community.

Episode summary:

• How Kirsten got into devotional writing. How she researches and writes her devotionals.
• How Kirsten became a public speaker despite being an introvert. The enjoyment she now gains from public speaking.
• The value of public speaking for writers, both in terms of using it for marketing and developing your use of language.
• Creating little videos for online marketing. Being okay with being ordinary at first, and practising, and growing.
• Writing out speeches word-for-word and learning them by heart -- versus using bullet points. Which parts to write in full; which parts to bullet-point.
• Ideas for speaking that are tailored for the topics you write about. Looking for themes that encourage even a person who is not your target reader.
• The causes of fear in public speaking, and tips for overcoming the fear, and reframing it as excitement. The biological responses for fear and excitement are the same.

In this episode, Belinda Pollard, Donita Bundy and Alison Joy interview Lisa Stilwell, a veteran of Christian publishing. She rose to the position of senior acquisitions editor with major Christian publishing houses, and then moved into authoring devotionals and ghostwriting memoir for Christian leaders and people from the music industry.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the podcast! And go to gracewriters.com for show notes, transcript, useful links and factsheets, and to connect with our online community.

Episode summary:

• How Lisa first moved into writing, unexpectedly, after stepping down from her long career as an acquisitions editor to care for her husband who had Parkinson’s.
• The initial uncertainty Lisa felt about her ability to write, despite so many years of working with words, and her tips for others who long to write but are not sure if they have the ability.
• How Lisa sets herself deadlines, which helped her cope by establishing a sense of routine during the years of caring for her husband.
• Counting back from the deadline to work out how much needs to be written per day, but also allowing grace for when things don’t go to plan.
• How Lisa – reluctantly at first! – moved into ghostwriting. Lisa hadn’t ghostwritten before and thought the timing was wrong for her to work on this project because her husband had just moved to hospice, but God knew what He was doing.
• The process of being selected to work with Helen Smallbone, mother of singers Rebecca St James and the duo For King & Country.
• The gentle and respectful process for Lisa of working with Helen Smallbone, welcomed into the home, and guiding Helen regarding how much she asked her children vs her own memories of what happened.
• How to set word count targets relevant to the project, and stick to them.
• Connection and trust as the core of a relationship when ghostwriting someone’s memoir. Having the courage and skill to ask probing questions, while respecting the person’s right not to answer.
• You have to write in their voice, not your own. Listen constantly, for key phrases and the pace of their speech, for formal vs casual expression, for seriousness vs humour and how the two moods interact.
• Transcribing interview recordings is a painful task, but it’s a process where you can really absorb elements of the story and see what extra questions you need to ask.
• Protecting yourself, because ghostwriting is draining work.
• The initially rocky and then smooth road to getting The Heavens Proclaim His Glory published – a coffee table book with Hubble telescope images combined with excerpts from authors and pastors Lisa had worked with across her editing career.
• How Lisa worked her way up to the senior position of Acquisitions Editor.

In this episode, Belinda Pollard, Donita Bundy and Alison Joy interview Kelly Needham – podcaster, mother of five, women’s minister and author of PURPOSEFOOLED and FRIEND-ISH. Kelly has a personal, powerful and honest message about how to resist the pressures popular culture puts on our writing goals, and where and how to find contentment.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the podcast! And go to gracewriters.com for show notes, transcript, useful links and factsheets, and to connect with our online community.

Episode summary:

• How Kelly’s first non-fiction book about friendship emerged organically from a ten-year journey of blogging about a topic important to her, and for which she couldn’t find the right book.
• The process of converting blog posts to a book – it ended up forming an outline rather than the actual content.
• The relief of getting the book out of her, and the process of choosing a publishing path: traditional vs self-publishing.
• Finding a literary agent, and choosing one who connected with her project.
• Finding a publisher who cared about the content and was invested in it.
• How Kelly’s existing marketing platform on her blog and social media was appealing to a publisher, but also not necessarily a huge platform.
• Finding the balance between making sales – which does matter a little bit, partly because it shows us what people need – vs having an enduring impact on the lives of individual people.
• Why chasing our dreams is unsatisfying, and yet we will still do it.
• Giving ourselves the freedom to “fail” as writers.
• False narratives from popular culture about what successful writing looks like, and how we can counter those by intentionally being good stewards of our minds.
• How to cope when our achievements don’t match our goals, and when we get post-partum depression after publishing a book.
• How much Kelly struggled with writing her first book, and how much we should be encouraged that we persevered through that.
• The value of making great Art as Christians.